‘The Good Wife,’ Season 4, Episode 12, ‘Je Ne Sais What?’: TV Recap

Well, that was a fast comeback! Far from last week’s lackadaisical episode, tonight’s hour is one of the show’s best—fast-moving, funny and filled with sharp dialogue. Even better: “True Blood’s” Carrie Preston not only returns as ditzy legal genius Elspeth Tascioni, but is positioned to take on a continuing role.

“Je Ne Sais What?” begins with a jarring, soft porn start as Alicia wafts into an erotic daydream while flipping pancakes for the kids. Zach, jolted by something he sees online, tells her, “I have to call Eli.”

Mr. Gold, in the middle of introducing new campaign advisor Jordan to Peter’s troops, is annoyed by the interruption. But Zach, monitoring Maddie Hayward’s website, has discovered internal documents that were accidentally left open. Before he finishes talking, though, there’s another call coming in—for his mom, from Elspeth Tasconi, who needs help on a contract enforcement case.

So the action cleverly goes back and forth between Eli/Zach and Alicia/Elspeth. The Hayward documents reveal that her campaign is going after racial bias in the SA’s office. “It’s a bluff. They want us to chase our tails,” says Eli, but the plan seems to be confirmed at a press event where Maddie announces that she is a “feminist that wants you to make money…I think racial bias is bad for business.”

At the same event, Maddie tells Peter she wants four debates. Eli insists on one. As for the bias issue—Eli tells Peter to talk to the ASAs in his office to see if anybody’s disgruntled; Jordan says, Let it go.

As it turns out, Elspeth needs help on a couple fronts: She’s behind bars in the suburbs, arrested for harassment after she tried to question the CEO of an athletic shoe company at a college appearance. The company has reneged on a $5 million contract with her client, Olympic medal winner Anna.

There is a hearing on the case in two hours, so Will is enlisted to pinch hit while Elspeth, true to wacky form, cheerfully introduces Alicia to her cellmate.

Will learns that the shoe company is voiding his new client’s contract for cause: Anna, charged with doping, has been banned from a Monday race.

Anna claims to be innocent and Elspeth concludes that her own situation is a set up. But until Elspeth is out of the slammer, Will must defend Anna before the CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sports), which operates under rules set by Swiss law. Little does he suspect how odd these rules are.

When Alicia tries to spring Elspeth—her client just missed the last transport back to her bail hearing—gruff Judge Politi (Vincent Curatola, from “The Sopranos”) tells her, “The lesson is, don’t get arrested in the suburbs on a Thursday night.” He then asks how Peter is doing and shows his retro leanings—“Bet you that bitch is nippin’ at his heels, huh?”—putting Alicia in the uncomfortable position many of us have suffered before, ignoring sexism for the sake of expediency: Politi says he’ll make a call. Unfortunately, Elspeth can’t be transported because she’s been demonstrating “erratic behavior” and must undergo a psych evaluation. It’s an insurance issue.

When Will and Anna meet with the CAS, set up behind a table in a sports training facility, the panel’s president, Judge Villapique, introduces himself and two other judges—in French. (“What the hell?” mutters Will. “They’re speaking French.”) They agree to switch to English because, as the lawyer presenting the case against Anna murmurs in French, Will is a victim of the American education system.

Will, whose French is about as good as mine, does get the jibe, introducing himself as “Will Gardner, from the good old U.S. of A.” But he is further disarmed to discover that he has to present a defense without hearing the charges. He argues that Anna passed all drug tests; they say that afterward, the tester found “ghosting,” possibly indicating doping. At one point, when Will objects, Judge Villapique dismisses him with, “There is no objecting. This is not ‘Law & Order.’” There is apparently a witness who saw a courier carry drugs to Anna. Reluctantly, by a two to one vote, the panel agrees to call the witness before them.

Back at the office, Diane is having her own daydream—involving a weekend spa treatment—when Will calls and asks for her help. Of course Diane speaks perfect French!

In lockup, there’s a funny scene where Alicia tries to coach Elspeth on how to pass for sane. Not so funny are Peter’s awkward attempts to interview ASA Geneva Pine in his office.

“How am I doing on racial bias?” he asks.

“You’re racially biased,” she answers, ticking off the Caucasians he’s hired and promoted and the African-Americans he’s fired and demoted.

Sputtering, he says that “there are reasons.” But she shoots back, “There are always reasons. It’s about who you listen to; that’s the key.” Geneva also blasts him for rejecting a request that he talk to the Minority Rights Coalition. “Your opponent is going,” she says. “I would talk to them. You’re a good talker.”

Back in the sports arena, witness Chenise, a runner and former roommate of Anna, testifies that “the night before we left for London, this Asian guy in a Cubs cap shows up talking all hush hush” and handing Anna pills. Chenise later found out he was one of the “notorious six” dopers.

When the panel starts muttering in French, Diane interrupts, making it clear that she understands them and admonishing in both French and English, “Prejudices have no place here.” Judge Villapique looks captivated.

In private, and working through the weekend, Diane and Will try to get the truth out of Anna. The guy with the pills was her boyfriend before the Olympics, she says, but he never brought her drugs. Over the phone, Diane tells Alicia that Anna is hiding something, but they don’t know what. Can Elspeth figure it out?

No surprise that Elspeth isn’t faring well in the psych evaluation. But in the middle of it, she has an epiphany: Anna was pregnant. “That’s why the unexplained hormone serge. The pills? What if it was Mifepristone? Tell her,” she urges Alicia, “she has to tell the truth.”

No way. For Anna, it’s easier to admit to doping than to having an abortion. “I wanted to medal,” she says, distraught. “I was pregnant and I wanted to medal.” Rather than tell the truth, she is willing to lose both the $5 million contract and the chance to run in the race on Monday.

Passing time, Alicia calls Peter, who invites her to drop by his campaign bus and then go out to dinner. He also offers to help get her client out of jail, but when he finds out it’s Elspeth, who once defended him, he can’t, because it will look like a political favor. But he does have an idea about how to get Elspeth to her bail hearing: “Question the arrest itself. Make it a constitutional issue. That way, the presiding judge will have to transport her.”

At the CAS hearing, the analyst who tested Anna’s sample arrives to testify. When Will tries to question him, Villapique objects: “This is not Rambo.” Apparently, the rules do not require actual proof to keep Anna from running in the Monday race.

Kalinda visits Elspeth to review her trial notes. “Diane’s on it, too?” Elspeth asks, delighted. “She’s so elegant!” She then tells Kalinda that the lawyers “have to attack the three pillars. Pillar one: Analysis—I guess we lost on that one…What are the other two?…Confidentiality and Chain of Custody.Like a three-legged stool. You knock that out and the CAS falls over.”

Peter gets into big trouble with his Minority Rights Coalition speech, basically admitting that his office is biased. “I want to learn,” he says.

Jordan, saying he’s not the type to point fingers, points at Eli: “You should listen to me. I know what I’m doing.”

But Peter’s very bad political day gets a personal boost when he finds Alicia waiting for him in his trailer. The soundtrack for their quick tryst is Edith Piaf ‘s “Je Ne Regrette Rien.” (Really? Seems to me that Peter should have a lot of regrets.)

Eli pounds on the door and is told to “wait a minute.” (“A campaign minute,” he assures Alicia.) The couple have a postcoital, elliptical conversation in which it is determined that nothing in their relationship has changed. (This brings up the continuing question: Who is Peter seeing? Hard to believe it’s been a celibate three years.)

“Don’t worry. Just the wife,” Alicia tells a stunned Eli as she pops out of the trailer.

In court with Elspeth, Alicia argues that “this is a constitutional matter.”

“No, it is a stupid matter,” counters Geneva, who will later stun the judge by referring to it as “ludicricity.”

Alicia says that the campus police arrested Elspeth in a parking garage that was not in their jurisdiction. But everybody in court is distracted to the point where Judge Politi orders them all to take their whispering into the hall and come back later, warning that he’s inclined to rule against the arrest “because I too think it’s stupid.”

Diane and Will bring evidence before the panel that the sample taken from Anna should be tossed; it was not shipped on the same day, violating “chain of custody.” Di signals to Kalinda, who flounces over in her miniskirt to present papers as the Italian judge hungrily eyes her. (Guess we have him onboard.)

Villapique gets his feathers ruffled, calling the shipping date a technicality, while the panel blathers away in French. “The Italian is for us, the German is against us but not as strongly,” Diane translates. “Villapique says this is what comes from these Rambo tactics.”

“What is it with him and Rambo?” Will wants to know. “Does anybody even watch ‘Rambo’ anymore?” (Maybe the judge means Rimbaud.) As a recess is declared, Will decides, “We need to flip the German. Where’s Tascioni?”

She’s still in court, where Geneva now offers a “hot pursuit” defense of the arrest. Reluctantly, the judge supports her—but he also allows Elspeth to walk down the hall to post bail.

She’s out—and running down the track toward Anna’s hearing, where Villapique has just declared that they have decided “against your chain of custody concerns.” Elspeth hugs Will, then Diane—“Oh what an elegant dress!”—and announces, “I’m Elspeth Tastioni and I’m late because I was under arrest. But I have one more witness.”

That is Dedrick, a German cyclist . Villapique objects, but the other two judges vote him down, and Dedrick testifies that two years ago, when he was banned from cycling for doping, he appealed: “There was no evidence, but a panel confirmed my guilt two to one. Judge Villapique convinced the Egyptian judge to switch his vote.”

It gets worse for Villapique when Dedrick testifies that it was a French athlete who benefited from his ouster. (“I just realized,” Will tells Elspeth. “You’re Rambo.”)

Eli, Jordan and Peter watch a replay of his race speech. Eli says people are calling Florrick brave, and that the speech inoculated him against any charges of bias. When Jordan protests, Eli blasts him: “We’re not teaching a fifth grade ethics class here. Win pretty, win ugly, it’s still winning.”

Elspeth and the firm’s lawyers are celebrating when Eli shows up at the office. He tells Alicia that he’s being investigated, which she knows, and that he’s being edged out of the campaign, which she didn’t know.

Wow! Just how great will that be, tossing Eli, who doesn’t suffer fools, together with Elspeth, sort of a Divine Fool? The hour concludes with another French song, Lisa Portelli’s “Animal K,” which may or may not have something to do with this development; you’ll have to ask Diane to translate.

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